


Things Obscured

by LucyLovecraft



Series: Night & Shadow [1]
Category: Ogniem i Mieczem | With Fire and Sword (1999), Trylogia | The Trilogy - Henryk Sienkiewicz
Genre: Angst, Foreshadowing, Fortune Telling, Other, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 17:34:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14699043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucyLovecraft/pseuds/LucyLovecraft
Summary: A young Cossack leader goes to have his fortune told.Writing prompt that is a prologue for a later piece. All shall be revealed in due course.





	Things Obscured

“You know these cards?” the witch asked. Streaks of grey showed like trailing mist in her midnight hair and her smile was bold with the knowledge of hidden things.  
  
“I’ve seen the foreign mercenaries game with them. I did not know they could be used to look into the future.”  
  
“They can,” she said, the cards flowing from one hand to the other as she shuffled, “if one knows how.”  
  
“I have had my fortune told often,” he told her. “By another witch I once knew.”  
  
“And what did you learn?”  
  
“Many things. But at the last, when it was most important, I understood what she had told me too late.”  
  
“Then she was a true witch,” the woman said, nodding in approval. “It is sure that she told you no lies, at least. What did you lose?”  
  
“Much, but nothing which had ever been mine.”  
  
“Love, then,” she said with a knowing smile. Then the smile faded. “No.” Eyes fixed yet unseeing, her head listed drowsily to one side. The cards flew under her fingers, the sound growing louder, taking on a whispering thrum. “No, it was more than that.”  
  
“I lost everything! Fame, honour, hope. I—”  
  
“No, no: not that.” She looked beyond him, the cards blurring in her hands. “What happened to this love—or was it ‘loves’?—of yours? Killed in the wars?”  
  
He frowned, his dark brows drawing together.  
  
“I have never loved any in the world but her. You are a witch: if you cannot see what has happened, then I cannot believe you can see the future.”  
  
Her hands stopped their movement. The cards had not been loud, but when the sound of their shuffling ceased, he dared not breathe to break the silence. The winter wind wailed around the lonely cabin, whistling in through the cracks. Inside, the only sound was the crystalline tinkling of embers cooling on the hearth.  
  
“A fair point, _ataman_ ,” she said. “But I can see both.”  
  
Holding the deck in her left hand, she plucked a card from the top of the deck with her middle and index fingers. She raised it to the light, face towards her so her guest could see only the back. The witch considered her answer.  
  
“Ah. And I do see.”  
  
Shaking her head, she slid the card—a man and a woman standing with one of the cherubim in the sky above them—back into the deck.

“What do you see?”  
  
“More than you, and far further, my steppe wolf.”  
  
“Do you trifle with me, devil’s whore?”  
  
“You are in my house as a guest, so I will not give you reason to regret those words—not yet. But as you came this far and in such weather, I would think you have some great need that drives you. I did not bid you come here. You came to ask a favour of me. If you have changed your mind you still have time to leave.”  
  
He made no move to go.  
  
The witch smiled.  
  
She shuffled the deck in a flurry of movement and spread the cards in a wide arc across the table.  
  
“This is your last chance to turn back, Jurko Bohun.”  
  
“I am not afraid.”  
  
“Then pick four cards and place them face down in a line before you.”  
  
“How shall I pick them?”  
  
“As you please. But if one calls to you, you should listen.”  
  
Face grave, Bohun reached for them, stretching out his hand towards the painted paper as though their touch might burn. The tallow candle that stood beside them hissed and spat, sending dancing shadows across the table. Yet when at last his fingertip brushed the nearest card he snatched it up once. He slammed it onto the table before him, pinning it as he might some creature which one fears to touch but fears even more to let loose. He glanced up at the witch, head held high and defiant.  
  
She said nothing, but merely watched.  
  
The wind howled outside like a lost soul.  
  
Still holding her gaze, Bohun hand’s darted out again, and he snapped a second card down onto the table.  
  
The witch grinned, though he did not think she was mocking him. He would have killed her, otherwise.  
  
If this was a game, then he decided he would play it. He did not fear her: he told himself that he had long since ceased to fear anything on God’s cursed earth or in Hell.  
  
Glancing down again at the arc of her cards, he leant forward, one elbow on the table. Bohun let his hand wander through the air. He touched none of the cards, but the awareness of them mere inches away made his fingers seem to tingle, like skin that anticipates a lover’s kiss. Disturbed by the thought, he snatched up his third card and placed it by the others.  
  
He reached out to grab the fourth in the same manner, in order to be done with the charade, but his hand moved through air that now seemed as heavy as water. Frowning, he pushed against it, making a quick, darting gesture to the left, meaning to pick his card at random. Yet his hand hesitated, caught by an unseen impulse. His fingers twitched, but his hand did not not leave its current place above the back of a card.  
  
This was his card, he knew, so why did he not take it up as he had the others? What, he demanded of himself, could be so fearsome in a scrap of painted paper?  
  
The strength of the witch’s gaze made his skin crawl.  
  
He asked himself the truest question: what could fate hold in store for him that could be worse than his past?  
  
Defying fear and fortune both, he chose what had been chosen for him, and lay the last card on the table.  
  
“There,” he said.  
  
“There,” she agreed.  
  
“Now what?”  
  
“So impatient, falcon,” she said mildly, shaking her head.

Of course she knew to call him that. The whole Zaparozhian host called him “falcon”. But to hear it on her lips was a violation. Had she bade him leap into the fire by that name, he thought he must have obeyed. He longed to be gone from this place, to kick over the table, send her damned demon cards flying, and take her by the throat.  
  
If the witch sensed this, she showed none of it on her face.  
  
“This card is your past,” she said, touching the first with a finger. Her hands were small like a child’s, with dirt under the nails.  
  
“This is your present.” She indicated the second card he’d chosen. “And here by it is your future.”  
  
“What is the last card?”  
  
“Your path. Your solution. Your answer.”  
  
“Speak clearly: you all speak in riddles, and they have lead me astray.”  
  
“And have you clearer answers to your own heart? How else should I tell your future?”  
  
“Read the cards, witch!”  
  
She smirked, turning over his first card.  
  
“Your past: the three of swords. Broken promises, broken bonds. Civil war, perhaps, _ataman_?”  
  
“You need your cards to tell you that?” he said scornfully. It seemed he would say more, but he fell silent as she turned over the second card. The crude, painted face of the card grinned up at him, and he stared back.  
  
“Your present: death.”  
  
“And will I die?” he asked softly.  
  
“It need not be so. It can mean change, often unexpected.”  
  
He did not speak, but only stared down at the card.  
  
“Death can be loss, or failure,” she assured him, “but it can also lead to new things: the small deaths of our smaller selves that lead to new beginnings.”  
  
This, too, was met with silence.  
  
Intrigued, she leant forward, trying to see into his eyes. Yet these were hidden by his hair as he hunched over the table. The witch pushed his hair back from his brow in an ungentle gesture, but Bohun neither moved nor protested. She considered what she saw, glancing back down at the card, then up again to the dark face so transfixed with revulsion and desire.  
  
“Or perhaps,” she said, “you are already dead.”  
  
He gave her no answer. Expecting none, she she turned over the next card.  
  
“Ah, now here is a card for a man such as you. Your future: eight of wands, reversed. Here I see violence and quarrels, but also courage. There is uncertainty, but also possibility. Much possibility, if one has the courage to withstand the storm.”  
  
The _ataman_ ’s face changed. There was no joy in it, but a certain kind of bitter satisfaction radiated from him.  
  
Yet there was still his last card. The witch saw his eyes stray to it.

He sat up straighter, aware of her gaze, demanding: “What of this answer, then? What must I do? What will come of it all?”  
  
He had dreaded this card, but now he wished only to know his fate so he might rush to its end.  
  
The witch turned it over, then blinked.  
  
“Well?” Bohun demanded, leaning forward to see the card, shadowed by the curve of her hand.  
  
“Judgement,” she said, catching one red lip against her teeth and chewing thoughtfully. “Your last card is Judgement.”  
  
He looked at the picture: a winged figure in the clouds, and the dead rising from their coffins for the day of doom.  
  
“And I will be called to account, is that it?” he said. “I have been judged already, and the doom laid on me exceeded my transgressions.”  
  
“Perhaps. And perhaps if I asked others, they might disagree: is that not possible?”  
  
“Only God can judge my heart. I have survived.”  
  
“Oh, to be sure,” the witch said, smiling at him with the devil in her eyes. “But they do say that there are often chances for atonement, if we are truly repentant. I would not know.”  
  
“I have nothing to atone for!”  
  
“I beg leave to doubt that, but it is your fortune, not mine. Perhaps renewal, then? Do you long for a rebirth?”  
  
“‘Rebirth’?” Bohun spat, his handsome face contorted with emotion. “Oh, I have wished for _that_ before: to be born again as something other than what I am. And then, fool that I was, I would have given anything, if only… But it is far, far too late for any of that to matter.”  
  
The witch laughed.  
  
“Well, since you are so sure there can be not other possibility, then I should say you most likely have a Hetman’s banner in your future. With the eight of wands, I would say it is almost a certainty.”  
  
With a disgusted snarl, Jurko Bohun pushed back from the table.  
  
“A neat little fortune, then!” he cried. “Very pretty. I almost believed you before, but I am not so much a fool that I must be consoled with pleasing lies.”  
  
He dug into his purse and tossed a coin onto the table. Some trick of weight and balance caught it on its edge as it rolled across the table and over the cards. It tripped over the edge of the Judgement card and spun there: a tiny, flashing circle of gold.  
  
The witch closed one eye, watching it.  
  
“A neat little fortune indeed,” she commented. “Very, very pretty.”  
  
She snapped up the coin and pinched it between thumb and forefinger, feeling the weight of unalloyed gold.  
  
“A true fortune, especially if you think me false.”  
  
“I would not have you bedevil me when I am gone, witch.”  
  
“Never, falcon. You have been a friend to our kind; we do not forget. And we are not so dissimilar.”  
  
He crossed himself and turned on his heel, making towards the door.

She leapt up, throwing out her arm as though she might pull him back: “Wait!”  
  
Bohun froze, spinning round with his hand on the hilt of his sabre, stepping back with his left foot to give himself room to draw.  
  
The witch held up the golden coin.  
  
“What’s this?” he demanded.  
  
“Why, it is The Sun!” she said with malicious sweetness. “Love. Joy. Happiness. The accomplishment of all your dreams.”  
  
“I will cut you down where you stand!” he howled, but he did not move.  
  
_“‘What’s this?’”_ she teased. “I bring you such glad tidings, and that is my payment?”  
  
“You talk of more payment? I thought you a witch, not a harlot! You have earned your coin, but I will not throw you more merely to hear you sweeten my future with lies.”  
  
The witch laughed, her eyes merry.  
  
“Were I a harlot, not a witch, I think I might not charge you so high a price for my wares!”  
  
“Go back to the arms of your devils, then, and be damned!” he snarled, and stormed out into the night.  
  
The witch stood, watching as the door swung heavily back and forth on its hinges. The doorway opened onto a void of night, the wind carrying in tumbling eddies of snowflakes as thick and heavy as goosedown. One great gust slammed the door against the wall, extinguishing all lights but the glowing hearth.  
  
“Well, well,” she said to the darkness. “We shall see.”


End file.
